Agony in Education: The Importance of Struggle in the Process of Learning |
| Author(s): Kuhlman, Edward L. |
| ISBN10: 0897893743 |
"Enchanted with novelty and obsessed with power, control, and efficiency, technocrats eagerly and imprudently plow under what they deem anachronistic relics. Utility and ease are their passwords, and the poor individual with sole recourse to personal resources and ingenuity is viewed as a waste of time and energy. What this means for education is that uniformity, predesigned programs, and abdication to an elite corps of experts have come to dominate and characterize our institutions. As antidotes for the technological age, Kuhlman suggests motifs and imagery from the classical world, such as agon, arete, and paideia. He reminds us of the agonies of the artist in the gestation of the great, soul-fulfilling creations of our past. He wonders if truly great accomplishments are possible without the pain and agony of individual struggle. He suggests that the individual psyche is withering on the vine because it is not expected to undergo the suffering necessary to transform it into an educated self.
Kuhlman exposes the dangers of excessive reliance on technical efficiency and avoidance of pain in the individual struggle to become educated and calls for renewed recognition of the importance of effort and agony in human accomplishment."
I read awhile it looked fascinating.
Stories from Response-Centered Classrooms (Language and Literacy Series)
by Barbara Smith Livdahl (Author), Karla Smart (Author), Joyce Wallman (Author)What struck me of this in my brief view was the validation of a person telling their story. How from there we move into hearing another and understanding what is taken from learning experiences.
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Eyes on the Child: Three Portfolio Stories (The Series on School Reform)
by Kathe Jervis First Sentence:Teachers across the country are creating new knowledge in their own classrooms, but as the editors' introduction to the Spring, 1994 Harvard Educational Review special issue "Equity in Educational Assessment" makes clear, researchers' preoccupation with large-scale assessment policies leaves out any vital discussion of teachers' efforts, experiences, and insights. Read the first page
I cannot tell you that this book has changed my life or changed my teaching understandings yet, because I just met it yesterday on a journey that seemed to lead me to it on a stack filled with thousands upon thousands of possibilities. It was found in the stacks of UC Santa Barbara as my daughter toured and I waited there tired of walking, anticipating the start of my 29th teaching year. (I'm as Tina Turner, Jimi might sing or Aretha in another vein, "experienced.") And that could lead to being jaded.
This summer I've warred internally with that, loss of hope, angers over being forced into bad educational directions, warred within self about remaining "for the money" warred over the cost to kids of systems not self reflective or societally resolved in purpose and structure that is blind to so darn much.Yesterday the wind blew over my life perceptions, shifting my centering away from this non productive waste of energy. In these words from the Tao I'll allow you my insight yesterday as I thought about the course for the new year.
" See with original purity
Embrace with original simplicity
Reduce what you have
Decrease what you want" from Tao te Ching
That's what lead me to stay with this one book there a long time in the library. It quietly addressed "what can I do." It would seem as I have often known, transforming self in relationship to that one encounters is the only possibility.
The book is organized presenting the precepts of the Tao very briefly at the top of the page, then a part now re-interpreted into the classroom setting or how that might speak to a teacher life, followed by this writer teasing out a situation she actually saw one of three excellent 25 year veteran teachers applying in this their work, not as a conscious application, perhaps at all as is the Tao, but as a natural way of their being reacting within a living application. The effect this had with children is fascinating but briefly presented. That's terrific for snatches of time.
So three parts to each precept.I am inclined to threes. It's natural for me. It's great because you can, if you want, just read the top precept, you can however read the way that's applied in a classroom, or into notions of teaching, or you could just read the exemplars of teaching situations. Or engage all of this in a page. Perhaps raising a head at lunch to still and center the day. As I was scanning the book for 30 minutes, hoping to check it out later which they dis-allowed, I read the pieces that described application into the attitude or stances one takes in teaching. Extremely resonant.
I, myself, was looking for something new, yet familiar, to take into this year. My particular issue is the battle to remain present, aware, unjaded, balanced and not provoked by the poor or uneducated behaviors that often overwhelm me/anyone in the setting where i work very hard to do a good , reflective, honest, fair job.( including my faults, mistakes, apprehensions, cog. distortions, the great difficulties with politics entering the fray, in poverty) This was really a gift towards that.
Nothing in the Tao has ever seemed to me other than a deeply constructive positive approach to living your life. You need nothing to begin to find your way but inner awareness and self belief in your way. Whatever beliefs systems you have it has value to hear this teacher. Lao Tzu is a teacher of profound simplicity.Because the book could not be checked out at the time I found on it here and ordered. It is seemingly the kind of book one opens at reflective moments within the days to consider how you approach the experiences with children and your peers. I'm considering opening a journal, or a blog to address how it becomes a part of my year, a third "project" the Tao of my 1st graders, briefly reflecting on the experiences as I relate them to the precepts. Done once or twice a week, or as they jump forward asking to be written as the currents take us this year we flow towards our understandings...... it would be of value.
I believe that I'd recommend this to teachers as a kind of centering or balancing scaffold for their work. Right now several teachers are friends that do sometimes read my pieces here, please consider this book, it has far reaching depth not immediately apparent in it's simplicity. Too often the "why we are here" is left the unspoken question in teaching at the deeper level, of the experiences, this might well engage a teacher reader in allowing you to answer this for yourself.
Teaching As a Performing Art
by Seymour Bernard SarasonI did not spent too much time on this one but the forward was very interesting. In 1st grade I often am a performer, as well as within the interactions. That said one needs to not see this persuasion aspect as a subtle trickery or a way to lie...I've realize that I sometimes deal with others deep in performance. It's important to consider with this work.....here is the foreword.
(Foreword) "In 1985 I wrote Caring and Compassion in Clinical Practice about physicians, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, lawyers in family practice, and teachers..." (more)
There were others I looked at more briefly...
Full Circles, Overlapping Lives: Culture and Generation in Transition
by Mary Cather Bateson (Author)"Home is the heartland of strangeness," writes anthropologist and English professor Mary Catherine Bateson; there are always parts of others, even our closest intimates, that are utterly unknowable." from a review on Amazon...Stories Lives Tell: Narrative and Dialogue in Education (Paperback)
by Carol Witherell (Author), Nel Noddings (Editor)This book I looked at briefly but I did want to begin to understand the "other" sie of the coin.
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